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As far as I can tell, Atlus’ whole business model is catering to obscure niches.  While their recent Demon’s Souls might be a change towards more straightforward action/roleplaying, their library is unique to say the least.  So when I got to play a bit of a game called Trine, I did not know what to expect.  I certainly wasn’t counting on an enjoyable side-scrolling Lost Vikings-a-like with a dash of Gauntlet for good measure, but that’s pretty much what it was.  Lo and behold, it was also pretty fun.

Didn’t get a gist of the story, but I get the feeling it’s only incidental to the gameplay.  You play as one of three characters – a knight, a wizard, and an archer – and have to use each to bypass the game’s problems.  The knight’s the only one who can fight off monsters up-close, the archer uses his bow to attack enemies at a distance and trigger distant switches and whatnot, and the wizard conjures up boxes and moves platforms to help you get around.  The twist is that, in singleplayer, you can switch freely between the three characters.  In fact, it’s necessary to get through the game’s puzzles and environments.

In multiplayer, two or three of the characters can be played at once, which makes things a bit more hectic: the mage has to build and guide platforms, the archer has to tag stuff at a distance, and the fighter has to cover them both.  With only two players, either one can switch to the third character at any time, making for interesting possibilities.  For instance, player one, as the mage, might guide player two across a moving platform, then switch to the fighter to dispatch a nearby monster while player two picks the mage and starts on the next puzzle.  Sadly, no online multiplayer exists, but local was still pretty fun.

Visually, Trine is colorful and well drawn, and the level we played was fairly intuitive as regards solving puzzles.  It’s all on a 2D plane so we’re not talking epic vistas and breathtaking realism, but  it does have a quirky, lighthearted fantasy feel to it.  As I said, it gave off a strong Lost Vikings vibe to it, a game which retains a special place in my heart.  For those unfamiliar with that title, basically you had three vikings getting kidnapped by aliens and had to guide them to safety.  Each had a special ability and you had to use them all to navigate the environment.  As for Trine, it’s a bit more lenient on character death, since you can revive any fallen comrades at regularly-placed checkpoints.

Due to an extremely noisy EA stage nextdoor, we could barely hear the Atlus reps, let alone the game’s audio.    Lacking a Playstation 3, I won’t be able to give it a proper playing for now.  As a PSN exclusive (for the moment, anyway) it does seem to push the boundary of what downloadable games are capable of, though it’d be a stretch to call the game itself groundbreaking.  But in any case, Trine will likely be a worthy entrant into the subgrene of puzzle-platformers, and co-op is almost always a plus.